palace of winds

I open my balcony door to let in the cool morning air; it brings with it an unexpected edge of autumn and I mentally check my calendar. Early August, still, in a year when our summer came monstrously late, not settling in until mid-June. And here, suddenly, a breeze that whirls in all falling leaves, pumpkins, heavy cable-knit turtlenecks.

On my morning blog-checking rounds I find that Carmon in New Mexico noticed this same season-shift yesterday, and looking at the pictures of her mountains folding off into the far clouded distance I fall unexpectedly back to Peru, to my valley a day’s ride into the mountains outside Cuzco. Have I talked about coming to the ruins there? The sun fading fast on us, shadows sliding up the sweeping mountainsides? I huddle shivering in the saddle, jacket zipped to my chin, knit cap pulled low over my ears and eyebrows. We have been mirroring the herd of llamas across the valley to our west, heading home for the night, and suddenly in all this distant deserted mountainland there before us is a little valley with a scattering of huts, paddocks sketched round with low adobe walls, the meandering of a stream and the ghost of an Incan outpost, centuries old.

I am taken suddenly, utterly, by a sense of homecoming. I have another life here. I cannot shake the sense of it, the call to stop here, or return here, to take deep rest in this little retreat. To step each morning into the high clear air, to lie down each night in a small earthen home beneath this bright sweep of stars. I am sure the reality would be different; it is an improbable dream. But what a promise of peace. What a thought to bring you through.

Yesterday’s entry ground to a striking halt beneath a mountain of work. And I don’t expect today to be any different, really, but I’m trying to steal a little time before everyone gets rolling (or, you know, shows up).

This morning I stepped outside to the unexpected smell of carnival — faint but unmistakeable, the delirious scent of something sweet and empty-carbolicious being fried, and my soul briefly but violently craved funnel cake and elephant’s ears. Luckily it’s passed now, as I imagine any quantity of either of those things would probably make me ill, used as I am now to a diet largely composed of veggies and whole grains and other relatively unprocessed things. And actually, if you set a funnel cake and about any piece of fruit in front of me right now, I would choose the fruit. Especially if it were a banana because I haven’t had one all week, woe. Must get to the grocery store.

This weekend I pledge to do my taxes and stare at my finances long enough that I can make a reasonable guess about how much I can afford to put into my shiny new retirement account. Or the shiny retirement account I will open for myself on Monday, anyway. It makes me feel secure. Like maybe one day I really will be one of those fit ass-kicking old ladies who backpacks around Europe for months at a stretch.

And like maybe one day I really will have a tinyhouse of my own. I think about it off and on all the time — mostly during those rare sporadic fits of cleaning and unpacking (still, woe). I mentally plot out the space I think I need — the space I could do without. How I might like to have things arranged. Trying to imagine the walls pulled in a little closer. Everything more efficient, smoother, cleaner. Smelling of new raw wood and sunlight. A garden full of bell peppers and tomatoes and carrots. Lemongrass in the windowbox. A tree heavy with cherries. Little porch with a hammock and me lost in a book. Birdsong.

Because it’s Friday I:

• am enjoying peach iced tea instead of just water
• splurged on breakfast with:
  • a slice of raisin rosemary rye bread with a smear of cream cheese
  • a banana pineapple frappe
    (blend: 1 banana, 1/2 c pineapple juice, 1.5 t honey, 1 T buttermilk; serve over ice & garnish with mint)
• am indulging in feeling persecuted at work
• am letting myself make all the lists I like

I also:

• baked last night (the aforementioned bread)
• am still dreaming of cats, and bicycles, and tiny houses, and hidden passageways
• want to go home

Browsing my library’s online catalog, I see they keep not one but five copies of the Pillow Book movie. Which shouldn’t surprise me as it’s all arty and what-not, but I was introduced to it from the ‘omg there’s nudity heehee!’ angle, so.

In addition to the many things it does have, my library does not have:

• Secrets of a Jewish Baker
• Season 2 of Cowboy Bebop

Interlibrary loan, however, can provide me the former. And probably the latter, come to think of it, but I haven’t yet checked.

These days I wake up — awake. As awake as you can expect to be six seconds after opening your eyes. Happy to be moving. Purposeful. Ready to act. And I step into this office and I can just feel it all shutting down, all the switches flicking off. Everything going dead and dull. And I’ve known it for a long time but still it makes me wistful, makes me sigh a little. It’s something my day never quite recovers from. I come home from the long dreadful boredom and want only to crawl into bed and sleep. Lifeless little sloth girl.

To the lovely requestor of pictures: they’re on my desktop at home, which I turn on rather infrequently now that I have my laptop. Well, and because I have a basket of laundry that needs to be put away sitting in front of that chair, and a huge bag of yarn sitting IN the chair. So really what I need to do is clean, I suppose. And get back on topic…

I shall email you pics as soon as I turn it on again. I also owe you an email about tinyhouses (not that there’s much to say except I waaant one, alas), and comments on your lovely new songs, which I need to download at home so I can have a real listen at full volume. (At work I keep my music quite low, in case someone comes in. It means I can listen to songs that say things like “you wanna get boned / you wanna get stoned / you wanna get a room like no one else” without worrying that a surprise visitor might overhear. Though I did have to take “Closer” off one of my playlists, because that’s really, really pushing it.)

If I had a hot boss I would be Bridget Jones today. I really must learn to test out sitting in skirts before I buy them. Ah well. Only a few more hours, and some errands, and weigh-in, and voting, and then I can crawl into my pajamas and watch House and then head straight to bed, nine o’clock be damned.

I’ve been mentally working on my Geek Wishlist, but every time I sit down in front of the computer I forget about doing it. I guess I’m remembering now, but — well. I’m feeling lazy, I guess. And guilty. Must do accounting. Must. Must.

I — now have no memory of why I wanted to post in the first place. Oh lord. Guess it’s one of those days.

There was a last gasp of warmth this afternoon, and I strolled coatless from my car to Ulta, basking in the warm, waning sunlight. As much as one can bask in three-inch stilettoes. They’re curiously comfortable, especially for how cute and Barbie-shoe-ish they are. They make me feel grown-up and a little corporate, which is nice some days. For the other days I have black flats that feel like slippers and my chunky librarian glasses.

I keep wavering between bursts of love for MN and moments of near tears where I wonder what in good hell I’m doing in a place that will be utterly bone-deep frozen in another month or two. Perhaps it’s because I’m ovulating. This whole sudden house-desire is making me all twitchy and uncertain, though. I want deeply to be able to afford land, and then a little home for it. But that begs the question, of course, of where I will buy this land. Of if I will stay here, or if I should look afield, and if so where? And that leads me back around to my job, where I have spent the last week educating myself about HSAs and high-deductible health plans vs. the standard sort we currently have. I am pouring so much into this health plan switch and pinning down dental and from there a 401k has been promised and a bonus arrangement, and there is a raise on the horizon, and I am building all of these slow and far-reaching structures and it is just strange. It is all just strange.

When I do buy land I want it to be forever. Well. I want it to be a very very good long while, anyhow, because I plan to put everything I have into this eventual house. It will be bricked with all of my dreams and the thought of having to move away from it is abhorrent. I need to get the where right before anything else.

Mostly I’m just rambling. I didn’t actually log into mt with the idea that I’d say any of this at all. I actually wanted to log in to whine about missing Stephie. To be temper tantrumish about the intervening states. Though I find I’m not in a tantrum mood. I’m in sort of a Daisy Buchanan mood, in that first scene where she’s lounging on the chaise and just too overcome to rise. Mmm, I haven’t read that since eleventh grade; I really must, now.

Bad thought, that. I’ve sworn I’d finish The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe before anything else, and all sorts of house books have already snuck past it. I shan’t let any other fiction. In fact, I’m going to go get started on it immediately.